Dow Chemical Layoffs News Accidentally Released Early: Report

Oct 23 (Reuters) - Dow Chemical Co was forced to announce a restructuring program on Tuesday after accidentally sending a draft of its press release to a Bloomberg News reporter earlier in the day, a source on Dow's board said. The source, speaking anonymously because the source was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said Dow had intended to announce the 2,400 layoffs on Thursday morning along with quarterly earnings.

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The Most Embarrassing Things That Were Accidentally Published

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Google's stock plunged after a press release on the company's earnings was accidentally published hours ahead of schedule. To add to the blunder, the release included a note indicating it was missing a quote from CEO Larry Page.

A Google engineer let an internal memo go public after he published it to his Google+ profile and accidentally hit the public settings, according to siliconangle.com. The memo included revelations like "Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right."

Thanks to a printers' strike, the Chicago Tribune committed one of the most famous mistakes in newspaper history. One of its Nov. 3, 1948, editions defiantly proclaimed "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN" when, in fact, the opposite was true. The reason for the accidental release: the paper's first edition had to go to print hours before it normally would, due to a printers' strike, according to the Chicago Tribune.

During a legal battle with Overstock.com, as well as some media outlets, to keep certain documents sealed, Goldman Sachs' lawyers accidentally released un-redacted versions of some of those very documents last May, according to Rolling Stone. Some of the tidbits include these musings from a former Merrill Lynch exec: "Fuck the compliance area." The documents also revealed that Goldman and other banks were engaging in naked short-selling, a controversial and illegal practice.

The Florida State Attorney's office prosecuting George Zimmerman, the man accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, accidentally sent media outlets evidence the office meant to keep private. The evidence, which was attached to an August email included details like a grainy photo of Martin's body and Zimmerman's college transcript.

The Iranian Fars News Agency thought it had a revolutionary news item on its hands; too bad the story came from a satire publication. The news organization with close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards published a story called "Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama," which it pulled entirely from the Onion. The news agency ultimately apologized for its mistake and pulled the story from the site, but one of its editors still continued to claim that the fictional story might in fact be based on reality, according to The New York Times.

Hardware and software company Oracle accidentally published an internal memo discussing how the company planned to sell Taleo, a business it recently acquired for $1.9 billion. The document, which Oracle accidentally published to its website, included pricing information for Taleo it was planning to sell and how much of a discount it was willing to give.

It's common practice for news organizations to write obituaries of public figures before they die. What's less common is for those pre-written obituaries to get published. But in 2008, Bloomberg released its obituary of famed Apple CEO Steve Jobs -- a full three years before Jobs died. The mistake, which temporarily rattled investors, happened while the obit was being updated.

In another pre-written obituary fail, CNN published a bunch of prepared obituaries to its site in 2003 of people who were still alive including Ronald Reagan and Dick Cheney, according to The Smoking Gun. CNN ultimately pulled the pages about 20 minutes after they went up.